56 Quotes by Eddie Rickenbacker

The smallest amount of vanity is fatal in aeroplane fighting. Selfdistrust rather is the quality to which many a pilot owes his protracted existence.

I've cheated the Grim Reaper more times than anyone I know, and I'll fight like a wildcat until they nail the lid of my pine box down on me.

I am not such an egotist as to believe that God has spared me because I am I. I believe there is work for me to do and that I am spared to do it, just as you are.

In this business, you find the enemy, then go after and destroy him. Everything else is rubbish!

The better I shoot, the less I have to maneuver.

Let the moment come when nothing is left but life, and you will find that you do not hesitate over the fate of material possessions.

The experienced fighting pilot does not take unnecessary risks. His business in to shoot down enemy planes, not to get shot down. His trained hand and eye and judgment are as much a part of his armament as his machinegun, and a fiftyfifty chance is the worst he will take or should take except where the show is of the kind that . . . justifies the sacrifice of plane or pilot.

Flying saucers are real. Too many good men have seen them, that don't have hallucinations.

The sensation of dying is sweet, sensuous, placid. It is the easiest thing in the world to die. The hardest is to live.